Dumfries DG One Leisure Complex Sat March 30th

Our first, and unfortunately only visit to Scotland. The original plan had been to go on to Dundee, Inverness, Stirling and Kilmarnock after tonight, but ticket sales have been so appalling that we’ve been left with no option other than to cancel; we don’t have the financial reserves to keep the tour out on the road for four or five days with no income, and as Middlesbrough has been similarly awful, that’s been canned too, and so we’ve now got a five-day hiatus coming up. Good news for the band and crew, who get to go home and see their friends and families, but not such good news for the four partners and the tour accounts. What is SO annoying about this is that here in Dumfries we’ve done really well, and they’ve sold more tickets than the five cancelled shows put together. Leading up to the show the other venues all seemed to be looking to us to cough up money for ads and posters, but THEY are the promoters, not us….we’ve already sent them a load of posters and flyers at our expense, and it’s their job to sell the shows, not ours….we help where we can, and have done some local paper ads here and there right through the tour…but the main burden is on the venue as the promoter. When tonight’s venue sent me an A4 sheet packed with the media work they’d already done and what they still planned to do, I really wanted to send it to all the other venues and say “ THIS is how you promote a show, you numpties “. What’s the point of us spending a year in preparation for a tour, then putting our financial security on the line to pay for it, THEN working our nuts off for the duration of the tour itself only for some council – run venue whose employees pick up their salary at the end of every month whether people come through the door or not to go “ Oh, shall we spend some money on advertising this show ? No ? OK then “ which is what seems to happen. We KNOW there are reasons…..we’ve seen how the recession is really biting now, and Dundee’s a very depressed town ( I’m saying nothing….) and the Scottish dates lost a huge amount of their pre-Christmas business to the terrible weather in December, but the bottom line is….so did Dumfries, and yet we’ve got 300 people here tonight, because PEOPLE KNOW WE’RE COMING. To use a line from the film Field Of Dreams, “ Build it and they will come “. DON’T promote the show and you end up with a situation like this. It’s slack, it’s lazy, and it’s wrong. If we were stiffing everywhere on the tour then you say “ OK, it’s us…no-one wants to see this show “ but that’s NOT the case. It’s beyond bloody frustrating, and it’s something we’ll have to think about very carefully on future tours. This is the second time that Middlesbrough, for example, have had the show, and the second time they’ve failed to sell tickets for it. See a pattern there ? I do. When you ask for an explanation you get vague “ Yeah, it’s really weird..…things we thought would do well just aren’t selling “. Well, that’s maybe because you’re not advertising them properly you TOSSERS !!!! Anyway, on to some people who DO know how to promote a gig….the DG One is a spanking new leisure complex which hosts all manner of events. Rodders was here last year with Scots megastars Runrig, and soon it’ll play host to the globe-buggering entertainment extravaganza that is the Roary The Racing Car Show, but tonight it’s ours. It’s a big place but it doesn’t feel soulless like some sports halls, and the facilities are really good. We even get a whole changing room to ourselves, though this turns out to be something of a mixed blessing. I go in early to have a shower and am the very first person to use the place since last night. I’m feeling quite skanky as I make my way into the first shower cubicle, but a good hot sluicing will sort THAT out. It’s got one of those water – saving things where you have to keep pressing a button to maintain the flow, so in I go, close the door, and duly press the button, at which point a spray of scrotum-shrivellingly cold water pins me to the door. I scream like a girl but there’s no alternative…either I bite the bullet and wait for it to warm up or I stay mucky. To my gasping, whimpering relief it only takes one more icy blast before it gets hot, and from then on all is wonderful. Nightmare. Everything goes together well and quickly today, though Rodders struggles a bit with focusing the lights as they’re miles in the air and can only be reached by a megaladder, so he has to wait until we’ve totally finished onstage before he can start his tomfoolery, and as a result misses his heart attack on a plate, aka Scotch pie and chips. As the rest of us chomp away and feel our arteries hardening, we reflect that maybe he got the best part of the deal after all….We’ve had to make some judicious changes to the visuals today…for obvious reasons out go the England World Cup footage and the Bobby Moore ad, in comes superb video footage of Dumfries in the Sixties and some Scotttish TV programme idents, but to Arthur’s disappointment we can’t find the Barr’s Irn Bru ad he’d asked us to look for. Still, we’ve managed to sufficiently de-Anglicize things, and Tomps has done a great job of re-editing everything on the fly. We’re really not sure what to expect as the lights go down, but as the band crash into Please Please Me, we see…what’s that ? It can’t be ….it is ! People are dancing in front of the stage from the very first song ! A bit of chat from Den, then it’s into Don’t Throw Your Love Away, and….they’re still dancing ! By Hippy Hippy Shake there are loads of people down there, and while they politely sit and watch the visual inserts, up they get again as soon as the next song starts. I wonder what’ll happen as Den takes the stage alone for The Times They Are A-Changing, but it’s brilliant…..everyone sings along and it gets one of the loudest cheers of the night. We are, it is safe to say, home and dry here.. There’s an interesting moment on Pinball Wizard tonight; I’ve had to move the pyros back from the edge of the stage because of the dancers, and they’re now close to the “black tat” we use to hide the cables. As the stage right pyro goes off, some of the fallout drops onto the black tat, igniting this supposedly flame-retardant material, and soon a merry little blaze is dancing along the front of the stage. Quick as a flash Nick runs on and starts stamping the flames out, and I’m mortified with embarrassment….until I see that the audience think it’s part of the act ! It’s THAT kind of night, and the band totally cruise home in style. Another booking here, please !! As we’ve got this unscheduled break now, everyone’s keen to get home….Rodders is heading back to Cornwall, so he and Nick jump in the van, and off they go. Phil’s off back to Sweden, and Arthur’s flying home too, so we drive to Liverpool airport to drop him off for a six am flight, and I do the rest of the journey on me tod. Tonight was totally great in so many ways,….in fact, the general view is that it’s been the best show of the tour so far. We feel that nothing can dampen our spirits…. Until the van turns onto the motorway and up comes the first sign….Preston 80 miles. And to think we used to reckon Preston was the end of the world. O joy unconfined. Just the seven-hour drive to look forward too, then…..